Euronews

A day after two members of Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party were killed in a drive-by shooting in Athens, locals told euronews they were shocked by the killings and afraid of escalating political violence in their crisis-wracked country.

A bystander said: “My bus was running late and I decided to walk towards the high street. I was just a few metres from the bus stop when I heard the gunshots. I turned around and saw the two young men dead.”

The Golden Dawn party has issued statements blaming terrorists and also the “anti-Greek government” for the deaths of its members. The party’s police protection was withdrawn in September.

Golden Dawn MP Dimitris Koukoutsis told euronews: “We can’t possibly know the precise motives right now. There are lots of possible scenarios. We’ll see where the investigation leads. But we said from the very beginning that we were being targeted by both the media and the government.”

The authorities are understood to believe the incident could have been a domestic terror attack by the far-left.

Euronews’ Stamatis Giannisis reported from Athens: “The Greek police are seriously investigating potential links between terrorism and organised crime. The professional cold-blooded way in which the murder of the Golden Dawn members was carried out is pointing the authorities in this direction.”